Black and White Issue

Anna Raccoon writes:

Whoa! Haven’t we all got our knickers in a twist? So much so that I find myself in agreement with Keith Vaz – not quite sure what the long term effects on my health that will be – probably detrimental.

The brouhaha stems from the jail sentences handed down yesterday to Mohammed Liaqat, 28, and Abid Saddique, 27, at Nottingham crown court after being found guilty at a trial in November of charges including rape. Saddique was jailed for at least 11 years while Liaqat will be locked up for at least eight years. The pair were the ringleaders of a gang that groomed and abused girls aged from 12 to 18.

It is not the jail sentences that are the cause of so much comment – commendably severe – but the subsequent comments regarding the racial profile of the offenders.

Jack Straw MP for Blackburn was first out of the box, giving succour to Nick Griffin’s oft trumpeted views regarding Muslim paedophile gangs by saying “there is a specific problem which involves Pakistani heritage men … who target vulnerable young white girls. We need to get the Pakistani community to think much more clearly about why this is going on and to be more open about the problems that are leading to a number of Pakistani heritage men thinking it is OK to target white girls in this way.”

Keith Vaz countered with “”I disagree with Jack Straw … I don’t think you can stereotype an entire community.”

Indeed, I don’t think that you can – stereotype an entire community of 12 and 14 year old girls. Nor do I think that Jack Straw is right in saying that the solution is “to get the Pakistani community to think much more clearly about why this is going on and to be more open about the problems that are leading to a number of Pakistani heritage men thinking it is OK to target white girls in this way.”

Not all 12 to 14 year old girls are wandering the streets late at night, believing that someone buying you a can of fizzy pop should be rewarded with a kiss and a cuddle in the back seat of their car which then gets seriously out of hand, watched by their goggle eyed friends. Not all 12 to 14 year old girls are standing on the street corner ready to be targeted.

That is not to exonerate the offenders in this case at all – every paedophile should be prosecuted; nor is it to lay any blame on the girls involved.

However, rather than feed into the anti-Muslim rhetoric and blame the Muslim community for not controlling their young men – how about looking to the parents of those young girls, and speaking to the white community in these areas?

Jack Straw correctly points out that the 12 to 14 year old girls in the Muslim community are off limits – how is that? Do they not walk to school; do they not pass young men in the street? Of course they do, with their heads held high and an attitude of total disdain, instilled in them from childhood, that anything less than a decent marriage is out of the question. A can of fizzy pop isn’t going to lure them round the back of an abandoned block of flats, nor is the offer of drugs or other gifts.

They are also routinely escorted by Brothers, and Fathers, part of a life time’s training that you look after your young people.

The difference with the girls ‘targeted’ in Jack Straw’s words, is that many of them are from broken homes, in care, unloved, unwanted, uncared for, unprotected. They have no self respect, no pride in themselves – how could they? No one ever took the time to give it to them.

The solution, Jack me boy, is to get the white community to be more open about the problems that are leading large numbers of Anglo-Saxon young girls to be that vulnerable in the first place, to lay themselves open to being ‘targeted’.

Feeding into the BNP rhetoric might conceivably eventually ensure that we never see a Pakistani offender jailed for a similar offence again – but it won’t cure the problem of a swathe of young children, drinking, smoking and taking drugs, out in our streets late at night, half dressed and willing to exchange favours for paltry gifts with any racial group of young men cruising the streets looking for willing victims.

The judge said that he thought that the race of the victims was ‘coincidental’ – I don’t.

There are millions of white 12 to 14 year olds who are not being ‘groomed’ – because they are at home with their parents, finishing their home work, tucked up in bed. As they should be. They are children.

Let’s put our own house in order before we start campaigning for the BNP just days before the Saddleworth and Oldham East by-election, shall we Jack?